Until Men Are All Like Angels, We’ll Need the 10th Amendment

Here’s a great article from last week’s Houston Chronicle, reminding us all why we need a government in the first place. Men, no matter how noble today, can be corrupted in the snake pit known as Washington DC. We can even look to FDR himself in this respect. While governor of New York, Roosevelt touted the importance of states’ rights- then as president went on to lead one of the greatest challenges to state sovereignty in American history. The founders trusted We the People, outside of the political class and the temptations of power, to be the ultimate check on tyranny.

10th Amendment needed because men aren’t angels

By TED CRUZ and SCOTT BRISTER

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

This past year, the federal government has marched further and faster than ever toward control of the economy and our everyday lives. This would dismay our Founding Fathers, whose vision of a carefully limited federal government animated the Constitution.

The most explicit statement of limited government in the U.S. Constitution is the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Thus, any power that the Constitution does not affirmatively give the federal government, it does not have.

The 10th Amendment embodied a revolutionary concept. Written just a few years after we had won our independence from Britain, the Constitution fundamentally changed the relationship between people and government.

For millennia, the source of power and authority had always been kings and government, and rights were seen as gifts by grace from the monarch. The Constitution inverted that understanding, with sovereignty beginning in the American people — beginning with We the People — and power given to government only to a limited degree.

2 thoughts on “Until Men Are All Like Angels, We’ll Need the 10th Amendment”

We would not need government if people could respect the rights of people on their own. In some ways, governments that protect the liberty of individuals does it against the wishes of everyone else in society. Its undemocratic in its nature since one person can veto the will of the people simply becuase it is their right to do so. The first amendment has been used to override the democratic process many times in our history for good reason because a person's rights exist an no form of government should be able to take those away.